I recently had a discussion with Mitel's Paul Ginn, Verticals PLM, and Tom Boyle of the NHS and Mitel User Group (MUG) board member, about unified communications in healthcare. Tom's enthusiasm for communication technology in healthcare in general, and Mitel in particular, is impressive. In this video interview, we discuss: - What does a ‘communications failure’ actually look like on the ground for healthcare organizations — and what’s the human cost? - The top communication pain points in healthcare - How Mitel provides reliability and the right deployment model for healthcare organizations - Where AI actually adds value in a clinical communications context — and where is it not ready yet - What's next when it comes to providing patient care and much more

At the 8x8 Analyst Summit in Silicon Valley, CEO Sam Wilson made it clear that the company is playing offense. With four consecutive quarters of growth and 21 quarters of profitability, 8x8 is building on a stable foundation as it uses its network, platform, and past acquisitions to compete in an AI-driven market. Wilson was direct in describing how he views the market’s AI messaging and why 8x8 believes its approach is more practical. As he put it, "Companies that say they’re AI companies are stupid idiots – it’s like saying you’re an internet company 20 years ago. AI will be in everything.” It's not about being an AI company - it's all about using AI to solve our customers' problems. Our customers care about their business, not if AI does the routing or not." Key Themes From the Event Several themes stood out at the summit: · 8x8 positions its “One Platform” as a fully integrated environment spanning telephony, digital channels, IVA, video, and CX. · Its AI strategy centers on partnering for models rather than building them internally. As Wilson explained, “We own the network and the data - the platform is the product.” · The company placed strong emphasis on frontline workers, or “the 70% the market forgot.” Wilson argued that every worker should be treated as a first-class worker and that businesses need to stop overlooking digital orphans - employees without laptops, email, or other standard tools. · 8x8 is leaning in on usage-based AI pricing, which lowers the barrier to entry and gives organizations room to experiment and prove AI's value without a large upfront commitment. · The partner ecosystem is central to 8x8’s strategy. 8x8 provides “the network and the pipes,” while partners add complementary technologies and services. As Victor Belfor, GVP Business Dev & Strategic Partnerships, noted, “The ecosystem is part of our product. We’re the one back to pat, providing a single contract, low TCO, and no finger pointing. We own this from beginning to end – delivery, support, integration, etc." New Products Expand the Platform Story 8x8 also used the event to introduce several products, including 8x8 Resolve and 8x8 Pulse. 8x8 Resolve is a mobile-first critical communications and incident management solution designed to support businesses with distributed workforces. It helps organizations notify, track, and coordinate warehouse staff, retail associates, field technicians, and healthcare aides—workers who make up an estimated 70% of the global workforce and are often the last to know when something goes wrong. 8x8 Pulse is a conversational intelligence solution that turns conversations into business insights. It uses generative AI to analyze interactions and add context so the information can be used more reliably at the enterprise level. Pulse draws on conversation data to deliver interaction-based insights and recommendations for workforce management, customer engagement, sales, and operational improvement. It can analyze multiple communication channels, including calls, emails, voicemails, support tickets, external notes, CRM data, and more. According to Dhwani Soni, Global VP of Product Management, every conversation an organization has -customer calls, support interactions, emails, meeting transcripts, and CRM notes - creates data that can be mined for insight. 8x8 Pulse brings those sources together so organizations can generate insights from both structured and unstructured data. The company emphasized that while many organizations are generating large volumes of conversational data, much of it remains fragmented across systems. By bringing those sources into a single platform view, 8x8 aims to help businesses surface insights and improve decision-making across departments. Built on the conversations organizations already generate, 8x8 Pulse is designed to surface relevant intelligence for the right person at the right time, from executives to frontline employees. I spoke with Igor Mostovoy, Director, CPaaS Product, and Dhwani Soni, Global VP of Product Management, about Pulse and Resolve, as well as Engage. One Platform Hunter Middleton, Chief Product Officer, presented 8x8’s vision and roadmap, and how 8x8 will differentiate in the market. While much of his presentation was NDA, Middleton summarized many of the themes discussed throughout the event in this video interview. He covered 8x8’s transformation, the “One Platform” approach, and 8x8's thinking around agentic AI and 8x8 AI Studio. As Middleton explained, the “One Platform” approach goes beyond integrating UCaaS and CCaaS applications. It extends below the application layer to the communications fabric, creating a single communications system for the entire company. He also discussed 8x8’s approach to frontline workers and how non-contact-center staff, including employees without desk phones or laptops, can help customers resolve issues. He further explained how AI capabilities such as Agent Assist can help these workers support customers more effectively. Middleton also discussed AI Studio and 8x8’s approach to agentic AI. As he explained, 8x8 has taken a different route from many vendors by using the latest real-time APIs from LLM providers to enable more natural interactions, simplify workflow design, and shorten deployment timelines. This is an approach that was not practical even a year ago ,and gives 8x8 more flexibility to move quickly. 8x8 Technology Partner Synthflow As mentioned, ecosystem partners are a key part of 8x8’s strategy. Conversation AI vendor Synthflow is a new partner, providing an end-to-end Voice AI platform that enables businesses to design, launch, and operate Voice AI agents with configurable workflows, enterprise telephony, and analytics. I spoke with Synthflow’s VP of Channels and Alliances, Matt Alexander, about the company, its partnership with 8x8, and how Synthflow stands out in a crowded market for voice AI agents and conversational AI platforms. Final Thoughts The summit highlighted a company focused on execution, platform integration, and practical uses for AI. Rather than treating AI as a standalone strategy, 8x8 emphasized how it can support business outcomes, improve worker experiences, and simplify customer engagement. I’ve been saying for years that the walls are coming down between UCaaS, CCaaS, CPaaS, and CRM. 8x8 is focused on a single platform built around the capabilities customers need rather than the acronyms. By tightly integrating its technology with ecosystem partners, 8x8 is differentiating not just through individual applications, but through the platform itself. While 8x8 didn’t use the term “agentic” as often as some competitors, it is clearly laying the groundwork for agentic AI through AI Studio and partner-driven capabilities. 8x8 has evolved from its early days as a UCaaS vendor into a communications platform provider delivering AI-ready voice at global scale. The company sees an opportunity to support the broader workforce with integrated communications, CX, and AI capabilities. I agree with 8x8’s view that as AI handles routine tasks, every worker becomes more of a knowledge worker. The company’s focus on knowledge workers who “make up the 70% of the workforce that the market forgot” points to a sizable market opportunity. With 8x8 Engage and a soon-to-be-announced product, 8x8 appears well positioned to pursue that market. While some vendors are investing heavily in in-house AI, 8x8 is leaning on partners and newer capabilities from companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI. That approach may help the company move faster and stay flexible. Time will tell how well it works.

Set aside any preconceived notions about Zendesk. While the company built its reputation around service and ticketing, its focus today is on the Autonomous Service Workforce, AI agents, and resolutions. At Zendesk Relate 2026, the company’s annual event that brought together more than 2,000 attendees, Zendesk outlined its vision for the Autonomous Service Workforce, built on the Zendesk Resolution Platform. Service and ticketing remain core parts of the business, but the company’s AI portfolio - including AI agents, AI Copilot, and AI QA -grew more than 100% over the past year. Zendesk’s broader mission is to resolve customer issues through a combination of AI agents and human agents, powered by the Zendesk Resolution Platform, a connected system of agents and copilots designed to support service operations. As CEO Tom Eggemeier noted during his keynote, Zendesk introduced the Resolution Platform last year with the idea that customer resolutions require specialization. Trained on roughly 20 billion ticket interactions, the platform unifies data, intelligence, and workflows. The Resolution Learning Loop creates a continuous cycle of improvement, allowing the system to learn from every interaction and become more effective over time. The shift underway goes beyond automation. It reflects service organizations moving from assisted workflows to autonomous resolution, from disconnected tools to a unified learning system, and from reporting on past activity to continuously improving future outcomes. Autonomous Service Workforce The central theme of the event was the Autonomous Service Workforce, a collection of specialized AI agents designed to perform specific functions. The strategy centers on: AI agents that execute tasks AI copilots that improve employee performance and support human agents by identifying customer intent, recommending responses, and suggesting next-best actions A learning loop that continuously makes the system smarter According to Shashi Upadhyay, President, Product, Engineering, and AI, Zendesk is building a workforce that not only assists employees, but also completes work and changes how service is delivered. He explained that “The future isn’t one general purpose bot – it’s a network of specialized agents – agents for billing, returns, collections, claims, etc.” Each agent is grounded in the appropriate data and designed to handle real-world complexity, while the system coordinates work and drives outcomes. These AI agents are aligned with customer workflows, integrated into customer environments, and available out of the box. A central component of this strategy is the Resolution Learning Loop, where every interaction becomes a learning signal that improves AI agent performance. The process focuses on identifying where AI failed, determining the root cause, learning from those failures, and feeding that information back into knowledge management systems to improve future interactions. More resolutions generate more learning data, which leads to additional recommendations and improvements, ultimately driving better outcomes over time. Outcome-Based Pricing This shift also requires a new business and pricing model. Zendesk argues that traditional seat-based software pricing is becoming less relevant in an AI-driven environment. Instead, the company is positioning itself as an early mover in outcome-based pricing, where customers pay only for outcomes produced by AI agents that are verifiably resolved or contained. According to Zendesk, “If we don’t resolve the problem, we don’t get paid; customers will only pay for outcomes that are verifiably resolved or contained." New Products and Anouncements Zendesk announced a large number of new products and capabilities at Relate, including: Agentic AI agents — specialized AI agents that can reason across messaging, email, voice, and backend systems. Built on Zendesk’s acquisition of Forethought, these agents operate across messaging, email, voice, and AI platforms, as well as both Zendesk and third-party service environments. Agent Builder, a no-code interface that allows teams to create and refine custom agents using natural language Voice AI Agents for both Zendesk Voice and Zendesk Contact Center Proactive copilots for agents, administrators, knowledge teams, analysts, and service leaders Action Flows, MCP, and expanded Knowledge Connectors that allow AI agents to take action across existing enterprise systems Zendesk Contact Center, a native unified contact center offering A modern ITSM solution built on the same Resolution Platform Zendesk Contact Center For analysts covering the contact center market, one of the key focuses at the event was Zendesk Contact Center. Built on the acquisition of Local Measure, Zendesk Contact Center is a native, AI-powered contact center built on the Zendesk Resolution Platform. The platform unifies voice, digital, and self-service interactions into a single workspace. With multimodal capabilities, digital and video channels become part of the customer interaction experience. AI-powered workforce engagement management (WEM) is also built into the platform, supporting forecasting, scheduling, and interaction monitoring. Built on Amazon Connect and leveraging AWS and Amazon Connect AI capabilities, the solution provides agentic AI capabilities through Voice AI agents embedded directly into the Zendesk Resolution Platform. This enabling seamless transfers to live agents with full context when escalation is required. Zendesk Contact Center supports: Voice routing Omnichannel interactions Voice AI Agents that understand customers in real time and take action toward resolution Voice Copilots that provide AI-driven call guidance and next-best actions AI-powered voice assistance Video calling and screen sharing Real-time transcription Workforce support Voice QA across 100% of voice transcripts An integrated agent workspace While Zendesk Contact Center is currently targeted primarily at SMBs, the company sees opportunities to expand further into larger enterprise environments over time. Although the offering will likely appeal most to existing Zendesk customers, Zendesk Contact Center will also be available as a standalone offering, broadening its potential market. As CRM and CCaaS platforms continue to converge, Zendesk (along with companies such as Salesforce) is betting that customer service organizations will increasingly prefer a single vendor that can deliver an integrated solution with fewer vendors, tighter workflows, and broader functionality. Differentiation As shown in this video, I had the opportunity to speak with Keith Pearce, SVP, Product Marketing, about the Autonomous Service Workforce, the Agent Builder for creating custom AI agents, Zendesk Contact Center, and other announcements. He also discussed Zendesk’s differentiation strategy and its approach to outcome-based pricing. Thoughts Zendesk has evolved significantly from its origins as a ticketing vendor. The company now has a broader vision centered on an AI-first operating model and the changing relationship between humans and AI in customer service. The company’s focus on resolution rather than tickets aligns well with broader market trends, and the outcome-based pricing model reinforces that positioning. A recurring theme throughout the event was the need for businesses to rethink workflows and operational processes. While organizations want to move quickly with AI adoption, trust, security, and governance remain major considerations. The challenge is not only implementing new technology, but also redesigning workflows, modernizing knowledge management, and helping teams mature operationally so AI can deliver value at scale. As Zendesk expands its vision, it will also face several challenges. Acquisition alignment and integration: Zendesk has acquired multiple companies in recent years, including Forethought, Local Measure, Unleash, HyperArc, and Ultimate. These acquisitions have accelerated product development and expanded capabilities, but integrating technologies, infrastructure, analytics, and product roadmaps often takes longer than expected. Overlap between acquired and internally developed products will also need to be rationalized over time. For example, Zendesk currently offers internally developed Voice AI capabilities alongside capabilities gained through the Forethought acquisition. Zendesk must unify these experiences without creating inconsistencies across products and channels. If the platform appears fragmented, it could weaken the company’s broader “single system” message. Company perception: Zendesk is still widely viewed as a customer service and support company. The company will need to continue educating the market about its expanded AI capabilities and broader platform strategy. Many customers attending Relate still primarily use Zendesk for help desk and ticketing functions. While interest in the company’s AI tools was high, many organizations have not yet deployed them in production. Adoption will take time as customers become more comfortable with operational AI systems. Competition: As Zendesk expands into adjacent markets, it is also expanding its competitive landscape. Although Zendesk continues to partner with many CCaaS vendors, Zendesk Contact Center also places the company in direct competition with them. Established vendors such as Five9 and NICE already have strong enterprise credibility and mature voice infrastructures. Zendesk will need to differentiate through platform integration, workflow simplicity, and operational efficiency rather than feature parity alone. Trust: Many organizations remain cautious about deploying AI into production environments. Zendesk must demonstrate measurable ROI, strong governance controls, reliability, and consistent performance at scale. Pricing: The move toward outcome- or resolution-based pricing also introduces complexity. Defining what qualifies as a “resolution” can be difficult, and some organizations may view pricing variability as a risk. Zendesk will need to clearly demonstrate value so customers see the model as an improvement over traditional licensing structures. Despite these challenges, Zendesk is well-positioned to continue pushing the market toward resolution-centric service models. By focusing on outcomes rather than tickets, the company is attempting to redefine how customer service platforms create value. It's about impact, outcomes, resolutions - this is a message most businesses can relate to, helping them deliver better customer experiences.

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